Chapter 3: Social Beliefs & Judgments

System 1

Fast, automatic thinking that requires little effort.

System 2

Slow, controlled thinking that requires conscious effort.

Priming

When something you've recently experienced influences your thoughts or behavior.

Embodied cognition

The idea that physical experiences can influence thoughts and feelings.

Automatic thinking

Thinking that happens quickly and without conscious effort.

Controlled thinking

Thinking that requires conscious attention and effort.

Overconfidence phenomenon

Being more confident in your judgment than your accuracy justifies.

Confirmation bias

Looking for information that supports what you already believe.

Heuristic

A mental shortcut used to make judgments or decisions quickly.

Representativeness heuristic

Judging something based on how much it resembles a typical example.

Availability heuristic

Judging something based on how easily examples come to mind.

Counterfactual thinking

Imagining alternative outcomes to something that already happened.

Illusory correlation

Believing two things are related when they actually aren't.

Regression toward the average

Extreme results tend to move closer to average over time.

Belief perseverance

Holding onto a belief even after evidence shows it may be wrong.

Misinformation effect

When incorrect information changes your memory of an event.

Attribution theory

How we explain the causes of people's behavior.

Dispositional attribution

Explaining behavior using someone's personality or characteristics.

Situational attribution

Explaining behavior using someone's circumstances or situation.

Misattribution

Incorrectly identifying the cause of behavior or feelings.

Spontaneous trait inference

Automatically assuming someone's personality based on their behavior.

Fundamental attribution error

Overestimating personality and underestimating the situation when explaining someone else's behavior.

Self-fulfilling prophecy

An expectation that influences behavior and causes the expectation to come true.

Behavioral confirmation

When someone's expectations influence how they treat another person, causing that person to behave as expected.